5 Staten Island schools losing nurses in budget cuts

Associated PressThe latest nurse layoffs are reminiscent of a tug-of-war Mayor Bloomberg and the Council fought six years ago, when the mayor cut full-time nurses at 134 private and parochial schools, 17 on the Island

NEW YORK -- The city handed pink slips to nurses at 17 Catholic schools, including five on Staten Island, in the latest salvo in the battle over school nurses between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council.

Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHM) officials informed St. Margaret Mary School in Midland Beach, St. Sylvester School in Concord, St. Roch's in Graniteville, St. Joseph's in Rosebank, St. John Villa Elementary in Arrochar and a dozen other city schools in the New York Archdiocese that their nurses will be gone at the end of the year.

The agency can fire the nurses because the law only requires the city provide a full-time nurse to any primary or intermediate school, public or nonpublic, that has at least 200 students. Some of the schools - such as St. John Villa, with 186 students -have recently fallen just short of that threshold due to shrinking enrollment.

If the mayor had his druthers, he'd change that threshold to 300 students, so he could get rid of even more school nurses. His latest budget cuts 147 school nurses, 17 at Island schools, to save the city $3.2 million per year. The mayor introduced a bill to change the law at a Council meeting earlier this month - though the bill is unlikely to garner much support.

In a counter move, the Council Minority Leader James Oddo (R-Mid-Island/Brooklyn) plans to introduce competing legislation tomorrow that would decrease the minimum enrollment for a mandatory school nurse to 100 students. That would keep nurses in all of the schools now slated for cuts.

It's all reminiscent of a tug-of-war Bloomberg and the Council fought six years ago, when the mayor cut full-time nurses at 134 private and parochial schools, 17 on the Island. The two sides tried to work out their differences through the budget negotiations, but it was ultimately resolved by legislation sponsored by the Island Council delegation, and passed into law in 2004.

This fight could follow the same path.

"The sentiment I got, the feeling we got in the first fight was that there are folks in the Department of Health that don't think these services should be provided to non-public schools to begin with. So it wasn't only a budgetary matter, it was a philosophical one," Oddo said.

"Regardless of the size of the school, or who runs the school, children have medical needs. Schools of every size have these needs," he added.